Dinner and a movie: 'College Road Trip' and local college restaurants

Even quickly clicking across all the kid-oriented channels on television, it was hard to avoid ads for "College Road Trip." Obviously that's the point, but maybe it's appropriate, too.

Germain Lussier

Even quickly clicking across all the kid-oriented channels on television, it was hard to avoid ads for "College Road Trip." Obviously that's the point, but maybe it's appropriate, too.

For many kids watching channels such as Disney and Nickelodeon, college is probably the furthest thing from their minds. It's also one of the single most important decisions coming up in their young lives, so anything to alert them to that fact is probably a good thing.

"College Road Trip" is about a young girl named Melanie (Raven-Symoné) who has planned her perfect college road trip with her girlfriends. Leaving from Illinois, she'll hit many of the major schools on the way toward Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, her father, James (Martin Lawrence), the local police chief, is a little too overprotective and decides he, not his daughter, is going to control the trip. He's hoping she'll settle on Northwestern University, which is much closer to home.

College stops become the least of the pair's problems, though, as the trip goes awry from the get-go. Car problems, literal wedding crashing, skydiving and more are all on tap for Melanie and James as they slowly but surely move from college to college.

"College Road Trip" is rated G, which means that it is very different from pretty much every other movie Martin Lawrence has ever been in. It's right up the alley of Raven fans, though, most of whom know her from the Disney Channel show "That's So Raven." Since those fans, and kids who have seen those commercials nonstop, are the target audience, ratings hardly matter. The film has generally been hammered by critics, with a 14 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's not a film for critics, it's a film for kids.

And who knows? Maybe after the film those same kids will be interested in doing a little college road tripping of their own.

And if you've been to college, you know that there's nothing like getting the inside scoop from someone in the know about which teachers are easy A's, where to get the best deals on books and, of course, where the coolest places to go are. So, we spoke to a few alumni from area colleges about the local spots they considered good hangouts. Here, according to them, are the places you'd eat after checking out Mount Saint Mary College, Marist College and SUNY New Paltz.